You'd be wrong about that. In the war of 1812, men defending fort McHenry from a British attack put themselves in the path of cannons that were trying to knock down the American flag. Their corpses were all that kept that flag from touching the ground, and those were the events that became the lyrics for the Star Spangled Banner.

That said, dying over a flag is a foolish gesture. Someone dying to defend principles and liberty are a different thing entirely. To take offense at the abuse of a flag is just silly. The flag is not sacred, but people are. Anyone who abuses a flag should not be ostracized for the flag. Instead, they should be reprimanded the same as anyone who would vandalize a building. Conversely, anyone that abuses a flag out of grievance with the government it represents should actually be called a patriot. That's what patriotism is, telling the government that they are infringing your fundamental rights.

You can't use lots of upstream if you don't have it. That's no different than saying nobody wants to speed when every car is locked at a top speed of 5mph. There's cloud storage, personal streaming video channels, bit-torrent, home cloud server, using your home network as a VPN when using public wifi, working remotely, hosting a WAN party, and so on. Let's not forget that several people could be using that upstream bandwidth at the same time.

25/3 isn't good enough. It should be 25/25 minimum. Asynchronous internet access is ignoring the fact that people are just as much creators of content as they are consumers of content. The slow upstream speed is just a ploy to keep people dependent on legacy services like cable and landline phone.

"Fact: A huge loss for society and culture is when people don't pay creatives for their labor and thus they are forced to do non-creative things to make money in order to live."

I think your online dictionary had a database error and gave the definition of the word "opinion" in place of the word "fact".

How about we blame the economic system instead? Because of money, people can't simply do what they love, regardless that it provides societal value, because they have to sacrifice their time to occupations that earn money. Even if they can earn money doing art, they have to concede to market demands. They often can't do the art they truly desire to make, but have to make art that consumers want. That's a tragedy in itself.

It should be changed to "warrant-less" or "without probable cause" (probable cause being clear and present threats to public safety, such as a crime in progress, reckless behavior, or visible contraband), adding consequences if an officer performs a search that violates such requirements. Evidence of this could be provided by way of mandatory video and audio recording devices on their person while in their official capacity. If no probable cause can be found, the officer will be subject to penalties to their wages or forced into unpaid leaves of absence. Repeated incidents will be grounds for an internal affairs investigation and the potential termination of the violating officer/agent.

If the police ask you to do something, they know that you are doing nothing illegal. If you were actually violating the law, they wouldn't ask. Police don't ask you to stop violating the law. They stop it right then and there.

Also, if they don't know what statute you're violating, then you're probably not violating anything.

Or, the telecoms should be required to set a minimum; a speed they must provide to everyone to ensure that the network has enough capacity. At off-peak times, users can go beyond that speed as network activity permits. During peak usage, all users would be throttled to their minimum level of service.

I was thinking along the lines of a lucrative job offer when he finishes his term in the FCC. You don't have to pad someone's pocket in order to bribe them. Recall the FCC commissioner that took a job with Comcast after approving the NBC/Comcast merger.

Yes, but it is, however, the same line of thinking. Setting terms on the use of a paid-for product to insulate a business from undesirable market actions is the same kind of thinking that copyright applies.

Put another way, it seems as if you simply do not recognize copyright as having any legitimacy whatsoever.

No, I don't recognize it. What of it?

Your retort makes absolutely no sense. Of what possible value is an "exclusive right" if one is unable to exercise such exclusivity vis a vis third parties?

What part of what I said implies that? An exclusive right means only the beneficiary of the right can use or grant use of an applicable item, but it doesn't make it ownership. Ownership is perpetual. Copyright is, ostensibly, limited. Nevertheless, copyright does grant the holder exclusivity to treat with other parties, but does not grant ownership.

Congress shall have the power, in order to promote the progress of the useful arts and sciences, to grant authors and inventors, for limited times, the exclusive right to their writings and discoveries.

You mean that one (I paraphrased it because I didn't feel like looking it up)? It says "exclusive right", not "assign ownership". Ownership is something that belongs to you until you choose to dispossess yourself of it. What is described here is not ownership. It's a grant of exclusive rights, which are to be for limited times (i.e. temporary). It is the understanding that you do not own the works, but have exclusive rights to control their distribution in exchange for the effort put forth to create them.